Tonni Morrison's novel Sula is about two young black girls who become very close friends but soon depart after taking different paths through life. The two young girls grew up in a town in the hills of Ohio called the Bottom. The town received its name from a slave owner who disliked the land and decided to give it to one of his slaves who he had promised land and freedom if he were to do a few difficult chores. He persuaded the slave that the land was considered the bottom of Heaven and the best land there was. Growing up, Sula decides to rebel against the Bottom's belief and live a more independent, reckless life, while Nel decides to marry and settle down. In the end, Nel and Sula are nearly the same even though they decided to follow different paths. Sula and Nel came from opposite backgrounds. Sula's mother Hannah was a widow and "had a steady sequence of lovers, mostly the husbands of her friend's and neighbors" (Morrison 42). There was a great lack of female friends in Hannah's life because of the way she carried herself. Hannah was very promiscuous and didn't care what anyone had to say about it. Since the house was way too crowded, "Hannah would take the man downstairs into the cellar in the summer where it was cool back behind the coal bin and the newspapers, or in the winter they would step into the pantry and stand up against the shelves she had filled with goods, or lie on the flour sack just under the rows of tiny green peppers" (Morrison 43). On the other hand, Nel's mother Helene tried to be the support of the community. She was a woman who "won all social battles with persistence and a conviction of the legitimacy of her authority" (18). She also tried to fit into the idea social mold of the Bottom and did her best to raise Nel to do the same. The girls became friends while they were in primary school. Nel and Sula had been around each other for five years before they initially met but Sula was never allowed to associate with Sula "because her mother said that Sula's mother was sooty" (29).